


My Gentle Sin Is This

by janeofarc



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (1984 TV), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Declarations Of Love, Feelings Realization, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, Holding Hands, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Little bit of angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 12:57:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14402604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janeofarc/pseuds/janeofarc
Summary: It takes a near miss for Holmes to realize that he cannot imagine his life without Watson.“You found me,” I said softly, gratefully. “You came back for me.” It was all I could say, and I repeated it quietly to myself as Holmes began to ease me to my feet.“I’ll always come back for you, Watson,” he said, his voice beginning to return to the tone of cool interest which was its usual character. “I am only sorry it took such a very long time.” An embarrassed melancholy touched his features, and I hated to see it.





	My Gentle Sin Is This

_from the personal diary of Doctor John H. Watson, twenty-fifth November 1894_

 

Although Holmes insists that this most recent of our cases deserves chronicling in the _Strand_ like so many other of our little adventures, I find it most impossible to give a proper account of it—due to the simple fact that I was not present when the coup de maitre  of Holmes’ deductions transpired. So monumental was this case in other ways, however, that I find it essential to compose a narrative of my own limited perspective of this case’s denouement, even if it is only for my own private records. 

It was the final days of autumn, a damp chill had settled over the great city of London, and Holmes was hot on the scent of a rather infamous gang of blackguards and petty thieves, who marked themselves with singular tattoos as the “Dockland Devils”—normally not the sort of thing he goes in for, but he insisted, as he always does, that the case held certain “features of interest” in the study of crime and the science of deduction. This may well have been true, but I suspect privately that the ill-use by one of these scoundrels of Inspector Lestrade’s own daughter had a great deal to do with his taking up the case: Holmes has always looked most unfavorably upon those men of the criminal classes (or any classes, for that matter) who are brutish and tyrannical in their conduct toward women. And at this time his regard for such men was more capricious and unforgiving than usual: the blows which the ruffian Woodley had dealt him in the affair concerning Miss Violet Hunter and the solitary cyclist still gave an ethereal greenish cast to the otherwise porcelain skin of his finely-shaped jaw. 

By a stroke of fortune, Holmes and I were just coming from an afternoon of Sarasate at the Royal Albert Hall and were thus perfectly positioned when we saw a man who must have been associated with this fiendish society emerging from a scuffle in which it appeared that a lady had swooned and fainted. When he caught sight of us the man turned on his heel and bolted away down the lane, boots scrabbling for purchase on the rain-slicked cobblestones.

“Quick, Watson, we may catch him yet!” Holmes exclaimed, and he sprinted toward the villain, with me as close behind as my old war wound would permit. As we chased him down the alley, the man bolted through a small crowd of concert-goers and we lost sight of him for an instant—when we emerged on the other side we found that the narrow street had forked into two and that we were not sure in which direction our man had escaped. With a wave of his hand Holmes gestured for me to search the left path while he followed the right, and I had time only to call out once after him (“Holmes!”) before we were broken apart by the labyrinthine brick of London which seemed to swallow us. 

I dashed down the street, wishing—not for the first time—for the comforting weight of my revolver in my hand, my eyes stinging from the rain, and as I careened around a blind corner I collided quite suddenly with a pedestrian who had been making his way home down the lane. I opened my mouth to apologize, but when I met resistance from the hands which had prevented me from falling to the ground, I looked round to the man who I had jostled and my apology fell silent from my lips. Leering unpleasantly at me, as much from the fiendish goat-skull tattoo at the base of his neck as from the uneven row of yellowed teeth, was the very man whom Holmes and I had been pursuing. 

“You!” I cried, raising my fists more by instinct than by design and striking him quickly across the jaw. The man stumbled backwards and I followed with an aim to incapacitate him, but before my next blow met its intended target I froze at the sudden presence of the cold barrel of a revolver pressed against the back of my head. 

_Oh, brilliant,_ I thought acidly to myself as I slowly raised my hands to frame either side of my head. The man holding the weapon to my head slowly came round, keeping his aim trained on me as he circled and came to stand next to his confederate. The man had the same grotesque goat skull tattooed at the base of his throat, a dirty, weather-beaten face, and, most alarmingly, a puckered red scar that gashed diagonally across the top left of his face, bookending a clouded grey-blue eye which swiveled, unseeing, independent of its mate. I felt an involuntary shudder quake through me. 

“Not so brave without your mate, are you?” said he in a rough, uncouth voice, raising his gaze—in only one eye—to meet mine. I met his gaze with a fierce glare of my own and said nothing. A sickly grin contorted his face as he watched my expression, and he continued: 

“Where’d he get off to, now, hmmm?” His tone was syrupy, soft—poisonous. I regarded him evenly and schooled my expression into one of mock puzzlement. 

“I am quite certain, sir,” I said in my best aristocrat’s sneer, “that I do not know who you are talking about.” 

The heavy golden rings I felt crash into my jaw at my resistance did nothing to sway my resolve. I turned my head along with the inertia of the blow in an attempt to minimize the pain of impact, but I felt blood pool anyway, hot and metallic in my mouth. I took a moment to compose myself, and then turned my head to face him again, head held high and an angry pride welling up in my breast. The man leered at me. 

“Let’s try again, shall we?” he said venomously, tapping my bruised cheek with a filthy, calloused finger. “Where. Is. Holmes?” He leaned toward me threateningly, close enough that I could smell the liquor on his breath. 

I stared back for a moment, and then by way of response I whipped my good leg from underneath me, swinging it with as much force as I could muster into the man’s knees, he stumbled, distracted, and in a moment of frenzied confusion the three of us scrambled for the weapon, I could feel the cold steel of the barrel sliding against my rain-slicked fingertips—alas, too late. The revolver was snatched from my grasp, and with a cold crack of steel against skull I fell to the ground and, for hours, knew no more. 

I awoke some time later, I know not for how long I was insensible; I found myself slumped somewhere cold and dark, the floor made of wood covered in a thick coating of dust, the ceiling only perhaps several inches taller than I. My head pounded dully, and the ache only increased with the steady back-and-forth rocking of my makeshift prison. A ship. I was on a ship. I had spent time enough on them traveling to Afghanistan and India to have guessed the type of vessel and the bearing of the motion, had I not been incapacitated. All I could work out at this moment was that the motion of the ship was more up-and-down than side-to-side, which meant that the ship was anchored, likely in a harbor or dockyard. 

I pulled myself shakily to my feet and looked around the fetid below-deck chamber in which I found myself, rapping at the wood with my knuckles and attempting to locate an exit. I found only one—a trapdoor above me, which I could just reach. I pushed against it experimentally, threw all of my not inconsiderable strength against the portal—and it did not budge even an inch. I sighed and fell back against the side of the ship with a sudden wave of exhaustion: my head was sore and tender, my arms were covered in finger-shaped bruises, presumably from being dragged here, and I noticed a deep, painful gash on my left forearm, the blood it had leaked soaking a crimson stain in my white shirt. An oath fell from my lips, and in an abrupt rage I smashed my fist against the wooden side of the boat, regretting the action immediately when every part of my body screamed at the effort. There was nothing to be done. I tore my shirt and used it to bandage my wound the best I could, curled my arms around my knees on the dirty floor, and waited. Waited for Holmes. 

I slipped in and out of consciousness for what seemed like days, shivering in the damp cold of the ship’s underbelly and praying to God in heaven that Holmes would find me soon. It is the highest assurance of the goodness of Providence that He—for the second time—answered my prayers by bringing me my friend. 

After an indeterminable amount of time, I was roused by a great shifting and shuffling above me—I had heard nothing before this—and hope’s daybreak began to dawn in my soul. I called out, my voice thin and weak with hunger and exhaustion and pain:

“Hello?! Help! Anyone, please! Help!” The response was instantaneous, and I sagged to my knees in relief when my plea was answered. 

“WATSON!” The plaintive shout was raw and anxious, the fear and the anger audible in the way the voice howled and keened, echoing around me in the dark. It was Holmes. _Thank God, thank God, thank God,_ I thought, peering up at the trapdoor, squinting as the light of a lantern flooded my face. A silhouette broke the canvas of light, and in another instant Holmes had leapt athletically into the filthy chamber to stand beside me. 

“Holmes,” I breathed, as he sank to his knees beside me, his worried hands flitting across my body as a stream of low, pained words fell rapidly from his lips, sounding earnest but making rather little sense in my hazy state of mind. 

“Watson, Watson, are you alright? You are alive, you are—I thought—I am so sorry, my dear Watson, so sorry, I cannot—I did not know—Watson, my dearest Watson, thank God, _Watson…_ ” He trailed off as his eyes and hands stopped searching my body for injuries, his cool fingers resting gently on my neck and his eyes upon my face—which I know must have been haggard and pale, though a smile had spread across my cracked lips. 

“You found me,” I said softly, gratefully. “You came back for me.” It was all I could say, and I repeated it quietly to myself as Holmes began to ease me to my feet. 

“I’ll always come back for you, Watson,” he said, his voice beginning to return to the tone of cool interest which was its usual character. “I am only sorry it took such a very long time.” An embarrassed melancholy touched his features, and I hated to see it. 

“My dear Holmes!” I cried with all the strength I could muster. “I have every confidence it took you less time than it would have taken any other man. I hope that you will explain your reasoning to me that I may enjoy the noble process of mind which has so often saved both of us—but first I believe a cup of tea is in order." Holmes laughed lowly as he climbed through the trapdoor, and I heard some other unintelligible comments addressed to, I assumed, Lestrade, and then he reached back through and seized my hands, helping me out of the darkness and into the light. 

Holmes supported my weight as Lestrade (it was indeed the good Inspector) shook me by the hand and clapped my shoulder as gently as he could manage, grinning at me. 

“Good to have you with us, Doctor!” he said jovially. “I’d ask you what happened for my report, but I daresay the account Mr. Holmes has already given me contains everything I need to know!” He smiled at Holmes gratefully, seeming a bit awestruck. 

“How long?” I asked weakly, looking from Lestrade to Holmes and back again. 

“Around thirty-six hours, Watson,” Holmes answered quietly, avoiding my gaze even as his long fingers curled more tightly around my arm. 

 “All the more reason for me to omit the…formality of your statement,” Lestrade said amiably. “I suggest, Doctor Watson, that you—both of you, Lord knows I haven’t seen Mr. Holmes so much as sit since the day before yesterday—you should both go home and rest, I believe.” 

“Capital idea,” I returned, as cheerfully as my fatigue would allow. Holmes nodded curtly to Lestrade, and then he was leading me away to a waiting cab, leaping in himself and then turning back to pull me up and inside as well. The rhythmic clicking of hooves on pavement and the gentle swaying of the cab as we made towards home soothed me quickly into a drowsy stupor, and the last thing I was aware of before sleep took me was Holmes’ hand settling gently on my knee as he gazed reflectively out of the window at the glowing twilight which cast its rosy hue over London.

I confess I do not quite remember getting from the cab to our rooms, but soon enough I found myself perched on the settee, my shirtsleeves unbuttoned as Holmes began to treat the frightful gash on my forearm. His hands were shaking, and I looked up at him, puzzled. I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could do so Holmes had made a pronouncement which sucked the air from my lungs. 

“I thought you were dead, Watson. That is why it took me so long to come to your assistance. Because I believed, for thirty-four hours, that you were dead.” He fixed his eyes on my face for a long moment, and then turned back to my wound, swabbing at it carefully with antiseptic.

“Why ever did you think such a thing, Holmes? What happened?” I cried, shocked. 

“When I reached a dead end after we split up to search for our man—Richards is his name—I realized that he must have gone your way, so I rushed back and then down the alley which you had traversed, looking for Richards and for you. What I found…what I found was a scrap of your shirtsleeve, flecked with blood, laying alone on the pavement—the heavy rain had obliterated footmarks and most other traces, save a handkerchief which lay several yards away. Fear seized my heart, and I examined the handkerchief most minutely, from which I learned based on the fabric and the monogram that its owner lived in the West End and had the initials T. R. R. I went to the police station rather expecting to find you making a report of the incident to Lestrade, but was disappointed in this line of inquiry. I still hoped, perhaps, that you had come out the better in the struggle that I saw must have ensued, and I thought it possible that you had returned here, electing not to wait for me in order that you might nurse whatever injuries you had sustained. To my dismay, however, the only thing waiting for me at Baker Street upon my return was a letter which had come by the evening post…” 

He stopped, focusing for a moment on winding the bandage he was holding around my injured arm, and when he had finished he let his hand remain on my forearm and he looked back up at me. I said nothing, knowing that, although in his own way and in his own time, Holmes would explain. A great sigh fell from his lips, and he reached into his pocket and handed me a crumpled paper, which fluttered like a butterfly’s wings in his trembling fingers. I took it from him and read aloud. 

“Holmes: We know that you pursue us. We know also that you do not know our identities, and that you cannot prove anything of your wild theories. There is no man alive who could bear witness against us—and if you want to make sure you remain among the living we suggest that you let the matter drop.” There was a signature, but it was nothing more than an unintelligible scribble. I felt anger boil in my stomach at the way they had threatened Holmes, but I was still puzzled. 

“My dear Holmes, I’m afraid I do not see in this letter what made you so fearful for me rather than for yourself.” Holmes’ fingers twitched against my arm, and he drew an unsteady breath. 

“‘No man _alive_ ,” said Holmes breathlessly. “Had they believed that you yet lived, a witness and victim of their crimes, they never would have dared to send me so bold a statement proclaiming their confidence that no man could speak against them. I knew from the letter that Richards had indeed met you, knew from the crime scene that you had been injured, you were not with the police or with me—and the last man to see you was clearly convinced that it was impossible that you could ever bear witness to his misdeeds. I did not have every fact, but I confess that the proof seemed overwhelming: I could not but conclude, Watson…that you had been killed by Richards.” 

“But later you knew! You had discovered the truth, how?” 

“With you…gone, my mind was consumed immediately with thoughts of revenge—to avoid thinking of other things, I daresay. I stalked through the West End, asking at house agents’ and pubs for a violent, large man with initials T.R.R., and it did not take long for a Timothy Redford Richards to be indicted by his neighbors. I disguised myself and found him at a tavern with his confederates, acting as a criminal myself in order to obtain the evidence I needed to arrest or detain them. It took all of my self-control not to strike them down where they stood—but I knew without first obtaining some kind of proof it would I rather than they who faced the gallows—a fate not wholly unacceptable—save that it would leave you unavenged.” 

“Holmes, I—” I began, a fragile agony blooming in my breast, but he silenced me with a curt wave of his hand, which he lifted from and then settled again on my arm, fingers tracing absently over the tender skin inside my wrist. 

“I beg, Watson, that you allow me to finish, this tale is an unpleasant one and I fear that if I do not tell it now I shall never have the strength to speak of it again.” The unhappy twist of his features and the unpretentious honesty of his plea silenced me, and I nodded for him to continue. 

“I conversed with them, convinced them of my trustworthiness, sat patiently as they drank pint after pint while I merely sipped at my own. They began to boast, Watson, about what they had done to you. I had to listen as this foul man, this cancerous blackguard, described with pride the way the two of them—he and his companion Hooke, an ugly, rat-faced man—attempted to induce you to betray me. And when you did not, and attacked them instead, they told of the way that they overpowered and outnumbered you, striking your skull with the butt of their revolver: dead, or so they thought, in one blow. With more coaxing I convinced them to tell me where they had taken you, and eventually they confessed to throwing you into the brig of an abandoned ship in the Docklands that they call their ‘home territory.’ I had everything I needed and was about to reveal myself, when Richards made an addition to his statement. 

“‘We made sure he was dead, of course,’ said he, ‘before we just left him there.’ I recall that he winked at me, and I nearly struck him then. ‘Can’t have anybody about who knows what he knew.’

“Swallowing the hard lump of anger that had risen in my throat, I asked him how he had made certain that you could not speak against him. 

“‘Stuck him w’ my knife,’ Richards said, and I was disgusted by the glee in his voice. ‘Scraped clean down his arm, enough to wake any man that was among the living. He bled something fierce—stained my good waistcoat—but he didn’t move an inch.” 

A small smile played on the corners of Holmes’ mouth, and he looked up into my eyes, smiling in earnest at the answering delight and recognition he found in mine. 

“Brilliant, Holmes!” I cried, amazed. “You could have been a very fine doctor yourself.” Holmes laughed softly, the sound of it like music after the bitter melancholy of his account. 

“I see, Watson, that you realize what I did in that very instant: corpses do not bleed. Men do—living, breathing, men. I shall forever bless that page of your medical dictionary from which I learned, so many years ago, that most welcome fact—corpses do not bleed! Having realized that, I got up from my seat and dashed away instantly, knowing that you had been alive when they trapped you, but not yet daring to hope that I might still find you in such a state. You know the rest, my dear boy: despite my most negligent delay in reaching you, I was not too late. Thank God, I was not too late.” 

He squeezed my arm again, and I smiled at him. 

“No indeed, Holmes, you were not too late, a fact which I will be ever grateful for.” A belated rush of relief swept through me, but a cold realization suddenly seized my heart. 

“But Holmes—they got away! After all the effort you put into their capture—why abandon the moment at its crisis?” Holmes looked at me for a long moment and then withdrew his hand from my arm carefully so he could get to his feet and pace the room anxiously, his gaze riveted on the fire roaring in our grate.

“My dear Watson, in that instant the object of my efforts changed entirely. When I arrived to capture them, the only satisfactory ending to this case I could imagine was one in which I avenged your untimely and cruel demise. If you had truly been taken from me, there was nothing more important to detain me from capturing Richards and Hooke. But everything shifted when I realized that you perhaps yet lived and that I had a chance of recovering you—my sole aim became to find you; any other resolution to the case became intolerable.”

It dawned on me slowly that Holmes truly had believed me to be dead, had grieved for me—the same fate I had suffered until a short six months ago. I opened my mouth to speak, but Holmes had finally turned away from the fire to face me directly, and at the melancholy unhappiness I saw in his cold grey eyes my words died on my lips. He spoke, his voice soft but clear in the thin November night air. 

“Watson…I find now, after suffering under the illusion that you were lost to me, and then, by the goodness of Providence alone, your being returned to me, that any life without you should be…intolerable as well.” 

At his words the memory of the bitterness of my own grief welled up in my breast, and I felt a sympathetic pang for my friend as I remembered the cruelty of the emptiness which echoed in my heart in those dreadful years of our separation. Holmes took a sharp breath which sounded suspiciously like a sob, and I vowed at the moment that, as long as I should I live, I would never abandon him to the hollowness of such stinging isolation.

“Holmes,” I began, not at all sure of myself, watching as he paced the room like a great cat. “Will you sit back down please?” Holmes did as I asked, settling back in his place next to me on the settee, burying his face in his hands. I reached out and tugged gently at his wrists until he dropped his hands back into his lap, his large eyes shining with tears. 

“What if I had not found you, Watson?” he cried unhappily, his voice vulnerable and raw, like an open wound. I reached for him then, unable to resist the urge to touch, to comfort. 

“What would I have done, what would I have become—had I not found you?” The agony in his voice dripped like candlewax over the fragile understanding there was between us, cementing it into place. I drew in a deep breath, and a rush of comforting words passed from my lips before I was conscious of having thought them. 

“Oh, Holmes…you did find me,” I said softly, silently willing him to look up at me. He did not, but I continued nonetheless. “You saved me. It’s alright now, we are alright.” I let my hand rest on his back, rubbing gentle circles that I hoped were soothing, but it seemed that even the tenderest of my physician’s instincts could not alleviate his misery.His hands twisted and twitched in his lap in his agitation, and he glared at his traitorous limbs which he, for perhaps the first time, had lost the ability to command. I was shocked to see a tear make its way down his porcelain face, the tiny bead of moisture trembling and glowing in the orange firelight.

“Watson,” he began, carefully avoiding my gaze, the blood rushing to his cheeks even as yet another unhappy tear slid down his cheek. “What if you had left me?” he whispered, his voice haggard and broken, as though he had not used it for weeks. 

_My God_ , I thought, watching his brow knit itself into knots and his fingers tremble on his knees. I knew that the sense in which he meant it was the departure from this life to the next, but I even so I sensed a pernicious despair, a buried fear, which had somehow taken root in his heart. _How could he, of all men, not have realized…_

But apparently he had not. And, looking at the torment on his graceful features, I found that I could not but tell him all. I withdrew my hand from his back and reached instead for the anxious fingers which twitched in his lap, taking his elegant, long, hands in my own larger and rougher ones. His fingers twined together with mine— _palm to palm in holy palmer’s kiss_ —as if they had always belonged there, and the comfort of that gentle contact urged me toward courage. 

“Holmes…Sherlock…you must know: there is nothing, _nothing_ , in this world that could prompt me to leave your side—and I daresay even God in heaven would have his work cut out for him. Anything less than a lifetime shared with the one who I love so dearly—”

At the way Holmes’ head finally snapped up to look at me I felt an electrical shock of fear bolt through my heart, but when I caught sight of Holmes’ eyes, which glistened hopefully, helplessly, in the firelight, the fear began to twist and molt in my breast into something else, something that curled round my heart and began to grow there. I felt a small smile playing at the corners of my lips, and continued. 

“Anything less than this, less than you, my dear Holmes…would be most intolerable.”

I was not frightened anymore. I disentangled my fingers from his, took his face in my hands, savored the warmth of the skin pressed against mine as he turned his cheek into my gentle caress. 

“John,” he whispered reverently, my Christian name a prayer pulled from the holiest and most secret place of his heart.I felt years of devotion, of companionship, of hidden longing and suppressed desire well up in my breast, and every endearment I had longed to voice, every token of affection I had wanted to give, every embrace I had imagined and imprisoned in my loneliest dreams—this love that dare not speak its name burst finally, joyfully, from my heart, filling my lungs and eyes and mouth, finally finding its expression when I leaned forward and pressed my lips tenderly against his. It was a revelation, it was a blessing— _let lips do what hands do_ —this kiss was a prayer whispered from my lips to his, and back again, a prayer for grace, for thanksgiving, for that holiest of loves which had awakened at last, never again to be silenced. 

It lasted but a moment; Holmes, overwhelmed, pulled his lips from mine and dropped his head to my shoulder, throwing his hands about my neck in a moment of tender capitulation. I let my hand slip from his cheek to the the crown of his head, allowing my fingers to wander through his soft black hair as they had so often longed to do. 

“Oh,” he breathed, and I very nearly laughed—for perhaps the first time in his life, Sherlock Holmes had been struck speechless. 

“Sherlock,” I whispered, unable to find any other word that could tell him what I felt. He seemed to understand. At the sound of his name he tightened his arms about my neck, and I was startled to feel moisture soaking through my shirt at my collarbone—Holmes, once again, was weeping. I opened my mouth to speak, but Holmes pre-empted my efforts to soothe him. 

“You have not upset me,” he said softly. “It is only…it is only that, for an instant, it seemed that this was no more than a dream, an illusion. Never in my life have I been regarded with such…” He trailed off, not daring to say the word for fear that it would shatter this new understanding which bloomed between us.

My heart broke at his hesitance, although I had guessed as much from the cool regard which was Holmes’ particular style. It was not the disdain of one who cares nothing for others, but rather the reticence of a gentle creature who has been many times burned. I lifted his head from my neck and pressed a tender kiss to his forehead, gratified at the joy I saw clearly in his tear-reddened eyes. Never again would he know such uncertainty, such agony. Not while I lived. He perhaps did not know what word he searched for, but I did.

“With such love, my dear ma—my dear,” I said, finishing his sentence. “With such great love.”

“John,” he said again. “I—you surely do not doubt…I wish you to know that—” he seemed to be struggling not with the idea of what he wished to say, but with the very words themselves, stumbling and tripping over them in uncharacteristic clumsiness. I watched him patiently, smiling. He paused, inhaled, and tried once more. 

“I have always loved you, John,” he said earnestly, his very soul pouring forth from his rosy lips. This revelation took my breath away, and I felt with some embarrassment that now it was I who was weeping. He brushed the tear tenderly from my cheek with the pad of his thumb, and I closed my eyes, overcome. “And if you will have me,” he continued softly, “I shall spend the rest of my life at your side, endeavoring to prove it to you.” 

“You have. You did. I—yes,” I said breathlessly, my heart soaring. “Yes, my dear, yes.” 

He leaned forward and kissed me once more, gently, softly— _thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged—_ a lovely, delicate caress. And so there was nothing left to do but pull Holmes across my chest to cradle him securely against my breast; as he tucked his face into my neck I closed my arms around him protectively—never again to let go. I offered a prayer of thanks to heaven: despite the ordeal we had undergone, we were safe, we were together, we belonged to each other, finally, as we were always meant to. Holmes, my Holmes, my dear Sherlock, drifted to sleep in my arms and I soon followed him there, as I have always done, and as I swear to do all the days of my life. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I play a bit fast and loose with the canon chronology, and my medical details are occasionally questionable--but honestly this fic is about feelings and plot has been included only to give them an excuse to be in love with each other. The Romeo & Juliet quotes (including the title) are from Act 1 Scene 5 if anyone is interested to read it (read it it's cute), and "the love that dare not speak its name" is from Lord Alfred Douglas' lovely poem of the same name.
> 
> Thanks for reading! :)


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